The manufacture of plastics bottles or containers by blow moulding is well known. Many such containers are of a type having a main container body defined by a base, four upstanding side walls from the base and a top thus defining a hollow interior for containing a liquid or fluid material to be dispensed. The top wall in many cases defines a neck which is often threaded to receive a closure cap. A handle is also formed at or above the top wall and alongside the neck allowing the container to be lifted manually for pouring the contents through the neck.
In some cases the neck is arranged adjacent one side wall so as to accommodate the handle extending from the neck toward the opposite side wall. However the neck can be located more centrally. In many cases the neck is tapered from the top wall upwardly toward a ring or collar at which the threaded section is provided.
Many containers or bottles of this type are designed for no-glug pouring action so that the liquid can flow smoothly out of the container or bottle while a path is provided for air the flow back into the bottle. Many different designs for providing such a path are available. The present invention is concerned with arrangements in which the path is provided between the neck and the interior of the bottle so that the path also is closed when the neck is capped.
A primary technique for providing such a no-glug action is to provide a path through the handle so that the handle connects to the neck at one end and the handle connects to the interior of the container at the other end. In order to ensure a path of the air back through the open top of the neck, there is provided a restricting orifice in the neck at a position below the connection to the neck of the handle so that the liquid flow is limited to the dimensions of the restrictive orifice and is confined to the side of the neck opposite to the handle thus leaving an area of the mouth of the neck at the handle which is available for the back flow of air through the mouth, through the handle to the interior of the container.
However this design of bottle requires a hollow handle which provides a path through the handle form the neck to the interior of the container. Such hollow handles are undesirable in certain applications and the need of a pinched handle with an anti-glug action is desired. Such pinched type handles, even though they are more difficult to mold, have the advantage of not allowing the contents of the bottle to enter the handle. This is desired in some applications because the liquid may dry in the open handle leaving dried particles which can flake off and contaminate the liquid stored in the bottle.
In such pinched handles, the plastics tube which forms the container within the blow mould is pinched together at the bottom of the container to close the bottom and is also pinched together at the top of the container to form a pinched section at each end of the handle. The pinched section is thus formed from both walls of the tubular material which is brought together at the top of the container to form a pinched web or pinched portion on the centre line of the container having a thickness approximately double the thickness of the wall of the material. Thus there is a first pinched area between the front end of the handle at the neck, the top wall of the container and the neck thus separating the handle from the neck and from the top. Similarly a rear pinched section is provided between the rear of the handle and the top wall of the container. The handle itself is hollow so that it is moulded with the two sides of the material again separated within the handle. An area between the handle and the top wall of the container is removed to provide a hand grip section through which the fingers of the user can be inserted.
Up till now therefore there has been no design available of a bottle with a pinched type handle which can provide the path for the return air flow in a no-glug container.
However a proposal is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,346,106 (Ring) assigned to Ring Can Corporation and issued Sep. 13th, 1994 which discloses a pinched type handle and also provides a tube which extends from the neck along the top wall of the container to an end of the tube at the rear wall of the container adjacent the rear end of the handle. The tube apparently forms a part of the upper wall and is moulded integrally with the upper wall. This product is apparently not available on the marketplace and the moulding of the tube as an integral part of the top wall is apparently difficult or impossible to achieve so that there has been no ability to commercially exploit this particular arrangement.